Wednesday Briefs: January 18, 2017

Here is a list of all the authors flashing this week, along with a brief snippet from their latest free work. Click the link after the snippet to be taken to the complete story on the author’s home page.

The Secret Sanctuary: Part 3 by Johayan

I heard Liz and her client’s footsteps disappear into the back and the door close to Liz’s workspace.

I took a sip of coffee and through about the previous two years since we had graduated and opened the shop. We weren’t millionaires but we weren’t scraping for cash either. We’d had very few complaints, no particularly difficult customers that we felt we’d need to drop as customers, and most importantly; referrals were growing our client base fairly quickly. We had informally talked about bringing on another therapist or two to help manage the workload.

I smacked my head against the head rest once Ritch was inside. I shouldn’t have touched him, not even to pat his back. It only made the want and desire to touch him in other places that much worse. Ritch was such an odd mix of vulnerable and strong male that it was hard to remember why I needed to stay focused. The first time I’d met him was only a brief contact, with him as one of several werekin moving between clans.

I’d been out of my head with grief over the loss of my brother, and I’d been

Panic grips me. What have I done? I seemed so simple, vital. Walk into the flames. Take Tian with me. Together. What a fool. And now we burn.

Slowly, my heartbeat slows and it sinks in to my terrified mind that I am not, in fact, burning, and neither is Tian. I reach for his hand, but realize I no longer have hands. Neither does he. We are no longer Castien and Tian. We are nothing. We are no one. We are one.

“We’ve come a long way in recent years,” Roy continued, “great changes have been made in this country with respect to the law and people’s rights. And one of these changes means that you can marry the partner of your choice, whoever he or she is, and your union will be recognized. Marriage is for everyone, which is how it should always have been. But better late than never, right?”

Roy’s words were greeted by nods and murmurs of assent. Rye and Slim gave Lee and Marshall two thumbs up.

The rest of the ceremony passed as if in a dream, as first Marshall and then Lee agreed to the vows which Roy recited for them. Marshall had heard the words before, when watching marriages that took place in television shows, but they’d never held such meaning as they did at this moment, when he was face to face with Lee and promising to love, honor, and cherish. And then they exchanged the rings which were handed to them by their best men, placing them on one another’s finger.